


Into Another's Arms

by alicekittridge



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because I can, Character studies, F/F, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Slow Burn, With a lot of the canon elements, gothic themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:35:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29302818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: In the latter half of 1987, the arrival of an au pair shakes up the lives of Bly Manor's residents, including the au pair's own.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	1. Settling, Stirring

**Author's Note:**

> This has been about a month in the making. By that, I mean a lot of thinking, a lot of brainstorming by hand as to how best this idea might be written down on paper (or computer), and this is the result. I am a very slow writer when it comes to long works, and seeing as how this one may be well over ten thousand words, there may be large gaps between chapters, so I ask for patience with this one. I promise it'll be worth it. 
> 
> Dedicated to Carol, light of my world, and my regular readers. I appreciate every single one of you! Thank you, as always, for reading xx
> 
> \--  
> Not rated as of now, but that will change for future chapters. Tags will also be updated accordingly.

**T** he late August heat bears down on her, accompanying the weight of a backpack on Dani’s shoulders, but it’s impossibly easy to put both out of mind with a view like the one unrolling before her eyes: stretches of gravelled drive and full, green trees that thrum with birdsong, and, almost looming in the distance, the grand, red-brick structure of Bly Manor. It, too, is surrounded by green, in all directions, from what Dani can tell. Shrubberies trimmed into neat, rectangular shapes, grass mown to an appropriate length, small gardens with summer flowers that offer hints of larger ones located elsewhere. She walks through the iron gates and shakes her head at the thing, thinking, _This is the life I’m walking into._ She was glad of the walk, despite its length, and thankful Owen—who had been the driver and is the resident chef—offered to drive her all the way to the manor’s front door.

“It’ll wake me up,” Dani had said, hefting her bags.

“I’ll see you for lunch, then,” Owen said.

Dani smiled. “Sure will.”

She inhales the English air and thinks she would have loved this place as a kid, even if she had no siblings to enjoy the space with. There are plenty of places she could’ve slipped away to read in, plenty of places to play, or to hide, if the day was particularly sour. Perhaps they might still serve that purpose.

Past the gate, Dani turns left, toward a lake. Its surface glistens silver and blue in the sunlight, and the closer she gets to it, she realizes there are voices floating from it. Two women, it sounds like, and a young girl. Lively, happy chatter. The shore comes into view and yes, her guess is correct. Three people in a circle, sitting on a blanket. Two have dark skin and beautiful, white smiles; the one on the left, Dani notices, is younger, closer to her own age, with long, voluminous hair the color of a warm night sky, while the one in the middle is older, her head shaven. Dani’s step slows for a moment, as it always does when she finds women striking, and it’s then that two sets of eyes find her. Smiles widen, and the woman in the middle stands, calls out to her, “Come on up!” Dani returns the smile, picking up pace again, and extends her hand once she’s within proper reach. “You must be Miss Clayton,” the woman says, shaking Dani’s hand warmly.

“Yes.”

“Hannah Grose. I’m the housekeeper.”

“Nice to meet you.” Their hands part. She turns to the younger woman, shaking her hand too.

“Rebecca Jessel,” she says.

“Oh!” Dani says. “Sorry for stealing your job.” 

Rebecca laughs. “Oh, don’t say it like that. We’re thrilled.”

Lastly, Dani turns to the girl. Fair-skinned, with brown hair and equally as brown eyes. She’s smiling up at Dani from her place on the plaid blanket, a doll clutched in a hand. She says, in her high voice, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Clayton,” and holds out her free hand.

“Likewise,” Dani says, taking it.

“I’m Flora.”

“What a lovely name!”

“Do you know what it means?”

Dani pretends to ponder. “Is it Spanish?”

Flora’s smile widens. “It’s Latin,” she says. “For _flower._ ”

“I get my romance languages mixed up,” Dani tells her.

“You know,” Flora continues, “you’re even prettier than I imagined.”

Dani, Hannah, and Rebecca laugh, Dani’s cheeks turning a shade pinker. Dani says, “Thank you very much.”

“Well,” Hannah interjects, with a pat of hands on her thighs, “I’m sure Miss Clayton would very much like to escape the heat and get settled in.”

Flora gets up quickly, with an excited, “I’ll show her her room! But a tour first, I think, if you don’t mind? It’ll be perfectly splendid.”

“I don’t think—” Rebecca begins, but Dani says, “It’s okay. A tour sounds lovely.”

Flora takes her hand and begins to tug her along. Hannah says, as they walk in the direction of the manor’s front door, “Lunch is in an hour!” Dani hears her murmur to Rebecca, “She adores that phrase of yours.”

Flora leads her through the outside first, taking Dani away from the pond and toward the statue garden, saying it’s her favorite. Dani asks why, and Flora replies, “I’ve always thought the statues were lovely. Especially if they’ve got moss on them. But Jamie keeps them clean.”

Jamie, Dani thinks, filing the name away for later.

The statues are grey stone with weathered features, but they aren’t so smooth that Dani can’t tell what they look like. They’re almost Grecian in nature, with the robes and the tied up hair and the burdens of baskets laden with various fruit. They’re tall, too, and interrupted now and again by potted plants and cement benches. Flora explains that a lot of summer evenings are spent out here, or by the fire, where she and Miles are allowed to roast marshmallows over the flame to make s’mores.

“You haven’t met Miles yet, have you?” Flora says, swinging their hands back and forth.

“No,” Dani replies, “not yet.”

“He might be in the kitchen. With Owen.”

“I’ve met Owen.”

“Have you?”

“He was the one who drove me,” Dani says. “He’s a good driver.”

Flora smiles. “He is, isn’t he?”

They walk from the statue garden, heading toward the back of the house, passing a building that acts as a church. Unlike the manor, it is grey stone, a style Dani has lately been referring to as Shakespearean. Flora says, as they pass it, “Hannah spends lots of time in there. Talking to God.”

Dani’s eyes linger on the windows, the dark pair of doors shut to the world.

“Do _you_ believe in God, Miss Clayton?” Flora asks, then adds, rather quickly, “I’m sorry if that’s forward.”

“No,” Dani says, shaking her head. “You’re curious. And I don’t, really. Haven’t ever, actually. I just remember having a faint curiosity when I was about your age, and something my mom told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That religion is for people who don’t want to do life by themselves. Because they need something, or someone, bigger than them to rely on, to walk with. It’s fine, of course, until the delicacies come out, but I don’t see it that way. The way I see it, we’re never alone, despite what those people think. Despite what _we_ think. But everyone’s different. Everyone believes in something.”

A thoughtful frown tugs at Flora’s face. “I suppose you’re right,” she says, though Dani knows Flora might not fully understand her words.

The church disappears, replaced by an expanse of hedges and garden. From this distance, Dani can tell the bushes are rosebushes, their full blooms varying in color from white to pink to red. Noticing her gaze, Flora points and says, “That’s the rose garden. Jamie’s garden. And there,” she points beyond it, into the trees, where the corner of a dark grey roof is barely visible, “is the greenhouse. Jamie’s second home.”

“Second home, huh?”

“Not really. We all joke about it. She doesn’t stay after dark much.”

She, Dani thinks. The pique of curiosity is only a tiny spark.

Flora turns them back to the direction they’d come from. “Shall we go inside?” she says. “I’m positively sweating.”

They go through the front entrance, at Flora’s insistence, who wants to give Dani a proper welcoming tour. Inside are dark wood walls, decorated with paintings and flowers. There’s a large table in the middle of the foyer, displaying a vase filled with yellow tulips. Their smell is sweet.

“It’s so grand,” Dani says, looking up at the curving staircase, the chandelier, the paintings of two beautiful women with long, flowing hair and beautiful clothes long out of fashion. Natural light and yellow light blend, making the wood seem darker, casting shadows.

To their left is a long hallway, from which waft the smells of lunch and the clatter of crockery. Flora leads her down it, still grasping Dani’s hand as if she’s known her all her life rather than just shy of an hour, humming a tune as they walk.

“Look who it is!” she announces to the room, startlingly white compared to the darker tones of the entryway. 

A table large enough to fit twelve is set with plates, glasses, forks and knives for seven. Beyond it is a farmhouse sink, and a stove, at which stands Owen in the same clothes, with the addition of a white apron, and a boy, also with an apron tied around his waist, but it’s too large for him; the end of it reaches past his feet, obscuring them. His hair is darker than Flora’s, and his eyes are blue, but there is no denying the similarity.

“Is this Miss Clayton?” the boy, Miles, asks, tearing himself away from the stove to approach her.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Dani says, accepting his hand. “Miles, isn’t it?”

“Correct, my lady,” he says, and raises her hand to his lips.

“Quite the gentleman, I see.” He lets her hand go, stepping back.

“Manners for days, that one,” says Owen.

Dani says, “It smells lovely.”

“It’s Irish stew,” Miles says.

Flora whispers, “He helped chop the potatoes.” Then, so that Owen can hear, “Is it almost ready, Owen?”

He leans to the clock on the stove. “Twenty more minutes.”

“Just enough time to see the upstairs.” Flora tugs at Dani’s hand.

“I’ll come too,” Miles says. He unties the apron and hangs it on the back of a chair. “Do you mind?” he asks Dani.

“Not at all,” she replies.

Accompanied by the siblings, they make their way back to the stairs, running into Rebecca and Hannah.

“We’re giving Miss Clayton a tour of upstairs,” Flora declares proudly.

“It’s really a lovely place,” Dani tells them.

“It’s a good place,” Hannah agrees. “Been good to us, for the most part.”

A sad look crosses Rebecca’s face, but vanishes almost as soon as it’d appeared.

“It’s supposedly haunted too,” Miles says. “Did you hear that?”

“I—” Dani starts.

“Don’t frighten her,” Rebecca says, reaching to give his hair a playful ruffle. “They’re just stories, Miss Clayton. _Children’s_ stories.”

On the last landing, Flora beckons for Dani’s ear. She kneels, offering it. The girl whispers, “But it’s true, what Miles said.”

“I believe you,” Dani tells her. Not just because there’s a note of seriousness underneath the playfulness of Flora’s voice, but because Dani is familiar with ghosts.

Flora and Miles lead her down a hallway, pausing at an open door. The room is blue, the furniture dark, the bed made with ocean-colored clothes.

“That’s your room,” Miles says.

“Ours are at the far end,” Flora says. “On the right.”

Dani looks. There are two open doors, the afternoon sunlight reflecting blue and pink onto the doors’ surfaces. Across the stairs, to the left, is another hallway. It’s decorated with floral wallpaper. Dani asks, “What’s down there?”

“The forbidden wing,” Miles replies. 

“We can’t go there,” Flora adds. “It’s where Mummy and Daddy used to stay.”

“I’m sorry,” Dani says. “You must miss that.”

“Yes,” Flora says, “but… not so much. Especially now you’re here.”

Dani smiles, but the words, as sweet as they are, stir a half-sour feeling inside her chest.

There is more of the manor to see, but Dani tells the siblings she’d like to see the rest after lunch. She wants to change her clothes, slip her feet into more comfortable shoes, wash her face, and run a brush through her travel-frayed hair. The children, thankfully, leave her to it, clearly excited that there’s a _later_ at all, and race each other down the stairs.

Once refreshed, Dani joins the others at the lunch table. Everyone is seated. Only one space remains unoccupied, the dishes not yet filled. Dani hesitates before digging into the Irish stew, wanting to wait until the last person has seated themselves, but everyone else has started without much worry. Conversation and laughter fills the room, warm, loud sounds, to Dani’s ears. She is very unused to family lunches, or any meal involving more than one person, for that matter. Six months away from home will do that, make you used to meals filled with the world’s quiet static.

A door closes loudly somewhere away from the kitchen. Hannah is the only one besides Dani who gives the sound full attention, saying, with a smile, “Ah. There’s Jamie.”


	2. Entrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped this one would be long. It had other plans. I can say that, as of right now, this story follows the canon storyline a little closer than expected, but it'll depart from it before too long. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading xx

**W** ith every sharp thrust of spade, every pile of dark, rich soil set aside, every mop of sweat from face and neck with the tail end of a well-washed handkerchief, the four-year feeling re-emerges. _I belong here._ Perhaps not at the manor, necessarily, Jamie thinks, despite the fact that it welcomed her with open arms and keeps her in an almost-permanent state of contentment, but in a garden. Surrounded by sweet-smelling blooms and fertile tilled earth. The buzzing of honeybees. The satisfaction that hard work is paying off, and that the dedication is smeared on her hands and overalls and streaked on sun-kissed skin. Standing among her work, breathing in late August air, Jamie knows this is hers. Knows other people know it, too.

“Every groundskeeper has a touch,” Hannah had said, months after their first meeting with the first spring plants blooming around them, observing the garden Jamie had painstakingly brought back to life with an impressed air, “and this certainly has yours.”

“Makes me wonder what the last one’s was,” Jamie said.

“Old-fashioned. Not that it’s a bad thing, mind you, but it’s lovely to have someone younger.”

A smile touched Jamie’s face. “’Cause you know I can keep up.”

There’s something else, too, Jamie knows. A fact that’s been dancing about the back of her head while she’s pruned roses and found a spot to re-plant a stubborn fern. The new au pair is arriving today. A Miss Clayton, Hannah had said. A name that sounds very much like a schoolteacher. Jamie imagines someone older, with glasses perched on her nose, a woman with an authoritative air but a side of stern sweetness. She thrusts the spade into the ground and strides to the white iron table, nestled in the shade of pine trees, sipping greedily from a canteen of warm water and untucking a pack of Lucky Strikes from her overalls’ breast pocket, nursing the quiet curiosity with nicotine.

The arrival of someone new always upsets an established rhythm. Like an asteroid caught suddenly in a planet’s gravity, and the others that were there before have to make space for the new arrival. It’d happened with her own, two years ago, freshly released from prison, reformed, stepping onto Bly Manor’s massive grounds with a feeling of awe and nervousness. She hadn’t expected the welcome she got: The Wingraves—Dominic and Charlotte and their children, Miles and Flora—and Hannah and Owen, along with the other, part-time housekeeper, Lyn, and the old groundskeeper, Eric, all standing at the front entrance of the manor, waiting to welcome her in. The warmest welcome of Jamie’s life, at that point. She was invited in with a pleasant smile from Charlotte and a, “Come have some supper. You must be starving.”

Jamie had told herself, on the car ride over, that she would not open up, only give what time was allotted—six in the morning to six in the evening, with a handful of breaks. Yet for all those silent promises, she found the months spent under the manor’s immense roof and on its large stretches of grounds in need of near-constant taming tucking her into the lives of these people, making her feel she belonged there. Making her realise that people, _some_ people, might be worth the effort. The same might happen to the new au pair, she thinks, grinding out one cigarette and lighting another, once she settles into the place and has come to get used to the newness. The rhythm, of course, will be funny for a while, and then it’ll fall in, everyone dancing smoothly.

She smokes the second cigarette, listening to the summer birds sing in the trees, taking out a silver pocket watch. Forty minutes until lunch. Re-planting the fern might take a wee bit longer. Not that the others care much about her being late. They know gardening hardly adheres to a strict schedule.

Another hour passes. A few more pats to the dirt, and the fern is tucked in, nestled among the shade of larger trees on the edge of the rose garden. It’d originally been Eric’s, and though the old groundskeeper had told her she could do what she liked with it, Jamie could not bring herself to be rid of it. Even when it began to die. She wipes sweat and dirt from her face, picks up her tools to carry them back to the shed, and hopes the thing will do better in the spot she’s just planted it. Sometimes, though, Jamie muses, plants can be a lot like children. Dramatic if their conditions aren’t just right, to the point of dying. Too much sun, too much shade, or not enough of either. Too little water, too much water. It’s about balance, growing living things. Finding a delicate medium and doing your damnedest to keep it. She might tell this to Flora and Miles one day, if their curiosity about gardening ever returns.

Back at the house, Jamie wipes her boots on the rug, then brushes them off with a stiff-bristled boot brush for good measure. She’s greeted by lunch smells as soon as she opens the back door. The curiosity, which had been set aside for the last hour, emerges anew; Miss Clayton would be sat to lunch with everyone else. There is, Jamie tells herself, strutting the short distance to the kitchen, nothing to expect.


End file.
